Al Horford met with four teams at the Four Seasons Hotel in Atlanta during free agency.

The Houston Rockets went first, followed by the Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics. Horford had met with the Atlanta Hawks prior to that.

James Harden was in on the meeting with Horford for the Rockets.

“I thought we had a chance,” Harden said on Monday. “I thought we had a really good chance, but obviously it didn’t work out, which is fine.”

Horford said he seriously considered signing with the Rockets.

“I really considered coming here as well,” he said of Houston. “Them and Boston and Washington, but especially here and Boston, were probably the two teams I was really, really looking at. So, just a lot to consider. A really good team, but at the end of the day I just felt like I was better off being in Boston.”

Horford prioritized signing with a team capable of winning immediately and eventually winning big.

“He’s just a great player,” Horford said of Harden. “They have a great organization here and I was very impressed with them…I just think overall I had a better fit here with the Celtics, with our depth here and coach and just everything. There’s just a lot of things that went into my decision.”

Jaylen Brown worked out with Jimmy Butler in the summer before his rookie season. The Boston Celtics envision Brown growing into a similar scoring wing as Butler has over the past few seasons.

“Just his competitive spirit, man. I love that,” Butler said. “He always wants to get better. He’s always [willing] to learn. He’ll ask all the questions that he needs to ask to get the answers that I have, and if I don’t have them, I’ll ask somebody. He’s just a true student of the game.”

Brown was the third overall pick of the 2016 NBA Draft out of Cal.

“Obviously he’s athletic, he can play, and he’s super smart,” Butler said. “He’s going to be a hell of a player. I think he knows where the game can take him. He’s incredibly smart and he’ll let you know that. Sometimes the kid’s too smart for his own good, like I was telling him over the summer."

“His dumb hair, I think that’s what it was,” Butler said. “I was like, ‘Man, you’re uglier than I am with that hair.’ So I’ve got to hang out with ugly people to make me look a little cuter.”

Brown consulted Butler’s personal trainer and weight conditioner.

“I think the thing that really attracted me to him was really his competitive spirit,” Butler said. “In everything we did, he always wanted to go up against me, and I commend that and respect it. Because the only way you’re going to get better is if you go at the better people in the workout.”

Evan Turner signed a four-year, $70 million deal with the Portland Trail Blazers after finally establishing himself in the NBA with the Boston Celtics.

“I was most definitely comfortable there,” Turner said. “Going through certain situations where there were coaches who didn’t comprehend my game and I wasn’t always in position to be comfortable sometimes. When you finally find that mixture of great basketball and off-the-court [things], you definitely don’t take it for granted.”

The Celtics have missed Turner while he hasn't quite found his place with the Blazers.

“It’s just the comfortability here and I think sometimes I worry too much about stepping on toes,” Turner said. “They have reassured me to play how I play and they will adjust. It’s always going to be a big adjustment getting the plays down. The pace of it [in the Western Conference] is crazy. The last couple of weeks I am fully getting our plays second nature to me, and once again now it’s just building the consistency.”

"Fans must be desperate," Green said after the game. "Like, who boos a guy for taking an interview. That's crazy. Y'all booing somebody for interviewing with y'all?

"Man, they may scare free agents away. You don't want to take an interview and then make enemies for taking an interview. I don't know. They may want to be careful with that."

Durant met with the Celtics in the Hamptons.

"If you're that mad at what somebody else did with [their] life, you need to evaluate your own life," Green said. "[Durant] made a personal decision for his life, for his happiness, for his career. And if people [are] that mad, they need to re-evaluate where their head is at in life.

"I don't know if I can stay that mad at somebody for deciding to do something with their life. That's a slippery slope."

Kevin Durant met with the Boston Celtics in the offseason as one of the six teams he'd consider signing with.

"What can they be mad about?" Durant said Wednesday night ahead of his first game with the Warriors against the Celtics. "I never played there. I never said I was going there. But they're going to support their team. It's one of the best fan bases in the league -- top-five, easily. So no matter who goes in there, they're going to boo them. But I have no attachment to Boston at all."

Jae Crowder was openly annoyed Durant didn't choose to sign with the Celtics.

"We were the only team in the NBA to beat [Golden State and the Cleveland Cavaliers] on their home court. The only team in the NBA, the Boston Celtics," Crowder told MassLive.com three weeks after Durant's decision. "We told him that. We played him clips from both games and told him basically the scouting report of how we guarded Steph [Curry] and Klay [Thompson] -- our entire game plan, basically. That's what made me mad. We f---ing told him everything we do to beat these guys, and we beat them, and he went and joined them.

"Afterward, I was talking to Isaiah [Thomas], like maybe after you sit back, [we] shouldn't have told him everything, but who the f--- thought he was going to Golden State, realistically? It was like a slap in the face for us, basically."

Durant was asked if Crowder's comments irked him.

"Nah, it don't bother me," he said. "All these guys that you ask the same questions, you know what you're going to get from them. So you're [asking] the same questions. Why am I going to be mad about a guy who has an opinion? I respect all these players. If they don't respect what I did, I can't control that."

The Golden State Warriors have denied a rumor that they could have interest in trading Klay Thompson.

Brian Scalabrine reported a trade scenario involving the Boston Celtics where Thompson would be traded for Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder and the 2017 first round pick of the Brooklyn Nets. The Warriors would then try to turn the Brooklyn pick into Nerlens Noel.

Thompson struggled with his shot to begin the 16-17 season but has been playing much better of late.

There reportedly have been no talks between the Warriors and Celtics, though the two front offices are known to be relatively close.

Scalabrine was an assistant coach for the Warriors during the 13-14 season.

Steve Kerr responded publicly to the trade rumors when asked by the media.

“Brian hasn’t called me yet,” said Kerr with more that a little sarcasm. “If Brian wants to call, I’ll get (general manager) Bob (Myers) on the phone and Bob and I can pick his brain and figure out what we should do.

“Honestly, I didn’t know about it until just now. I think our guys know that most of that stuff is almost always just BS. If that became a story, I would probably talk to Klay. But I didn’t know it was a story until just now. I’ll go home, get on the Internet and decide whether to call Klay or not. There’s a lot of fake news.”

Isaiah Thomas was appreciative of recent praise he received from Kevin Garnett.

"Isaiah's got so much heart and he plays so big. Very gritty, very tough," Garnett said during a segment with Rasheed Wallace in which the former NBA stars debated whether they would rather have Thomas or Cleveland's Kyrie Irving taking a final shot. "It’s a point guard league. The point guard matchup is very difficult. ... I love Isaiah’s heart. Your point guard, a lot of times the identity of your team starts with your point guard. Isaiah, I love his heart and how he plays."

"I’m the 5-9 Kevin Garnett. That’s who I want to be," said Thomas. "[Garnett's praise] means a lot. For a guy I looked up to, who I knew I would be nothing like [in size], but just the way he prepared himself, the way he didn’t back down from anybody, and how he was so locked in. It was amazing to see that up close. For him to say that about me, that says a lot."

Thomas is averaging 26.2 points and 6.8 assists through six games this season, and is shooting a career-best 49.5 percent from the floor.

Joel Embiid is finally healthy after two seasons of sitting out following multiple foot surgeries and he looks like one of basketball's next great center.

The Celtics reportedly tried to trade up to pick Embiid in the 2014 NBA Draft.

"The Celtics were trying to trade the sixth pick that year, which ended up being Marcus Smart," said Bill Simmons. "They were trying to trade the sixth pick and the Brooklyn pick (17th overall pick) to move up to three to pick Embiid even though he was hurt."

Boston has since been linked to trade scenarios with the 76ers involving both Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor.